Challenge of E-Racing 21 Events in 23 Days to Mimic the Tour De France Schedule a New Trend for Amateur and Recreational Cyclists

Fort Worth, Texas -

A new challenge called The Tour de France Schedule Challenge for cyclists is emerging where cyclists attempt to ride 21 e-races in 23 days, mimicking the Tour de France racing schedule of the professional peloton.

Riders accepting the challenge don’t need to ride the same distance as the Tour riders. Most cyclists' real-life responsibilities and careers prohibit such an effort because of time constraints as most stages in the real-world Tour last three to four hours. Instead, the challenge participants choose to do shorter races on Zwift, an online cycling platform, that tends to be 20-minute to 1-hour in length.

The challenge was created by Jordan Fowler of Meatmotor.com, a site that gathers sports science studies and distills them to help endurance athletes improve their performance in terms of speed and distance. He started the effort as an experiment to see what physiological and performance changes would take place with consecutive days of racing.

“It started with some COVID quarantine boredom, a lack of real-world racing, and my interest in data and sports science,” states creator Jordan Fowler. “It was hard but quite fun, and much less physically crushing than a double century 200 miler or other ultra-type race. It was a real motivation to train during a time when it would have been easy to skip riding.”

Here are the informal "rules" for those desiring to participate.

Participants race 21 times for every day on Zwift, or another e-racing platform, for 23 days with only two rest days throughout the timeframe. Exception: Participants may do real-world races or a long ride on the weekends with an intense time trial or group ride as part of the long ride.

Participants can choose whatever online race times best fit their schedule. They should try to vary the distance of the events and include extended races.

Include some mountain stages such as the Alpe du Zwift course.

Race in the legitimate category on Zwiftpower (https://zwiftpower.com). Racers should attempt to place as high as possible for each race in which they participate.

Make Two of the races a time trial race. Time trials are racing where no drafting is enabled.

Those considering the challenge can get more details, learn about the performance and physiological changes that the original participant experienced, and more on the Meat Motor website.

Meat Motor is a website dedicated to breaking down sports science studies to help readers become faster cyclists and endurance athletes.